U.S. foreign-policy sage Henry Kissinger used to tell Harvard students that the test of a good statesman was his ability to sense the evolution of an event before it happened. What President Richard Nixon's secretary of state meant was that a successful diplomat had to be able to read the character of his foreign counterpart as well as have the ability to take the pulse of the country he was dealing with

Failed 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney is lobbying to be picked as Donald Trump’s Secretary of State, so perhaps Trump’s team should review all of Romney’s undiplomatic statements from 2015 and 2016 about the future Commander in Chief.

Say what you will about Donny Deutsch, but the man-about-Manhattan and the Hamptons moves in the Trump social circle and is well-connected there. So attention must be paid to Deutsch’s declaration on today’s With All Due Respect. Asked by Mark Halperin whether the talk about Romney being considered for Secretary of State is “real, whether Romney might end up with the job,” Deutsch responded: “somebody very, very, very high up in the inner [Trump] circle yesterday told me it was very, very real,” and that this person was “very excited about it.” View the video here.

Truncated title. Full title: 'Never Trump’ Taps Their Candidate: Bald Unknown Mormon Hill Staffer from Goldman Sachs Who ‘Resettled’ Refugees for UN With less than 100 days until the election, the Never Trump movement has fielded yet another independent presidential candidate to keep Republican nominee Donald Trump out of the White House. This time their candidate is Evan McMullin. Here is what we know about him.

The political-media establishment has provided more than a few tempting targets to push back on in the past 48 hours, but nothing rankles me more than the sudden nostalgia liberal Democrats are heaping on Mitt Romney. Trump has inspired some sort of Romney renaissance among the left, openly telling Republicans and the media how much they admired and respected the last Republican candidate; that he was at least fit to lead! As an operative who worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, I can tell you that this hilariously bogus argument from the left lacks even a modicum of self-awareness. Yet...

Former Republican nominee Mitt Romney said earlier this month he thought Donald Trump could win the presidency, citing Hillary Clinton’s high unfavorable numbers and the unpredictability of the race. Romney was speaking with Republican consultant Mike Murphy’s Radio Free GOP podcast released two weeks ago when he made the comments. “You have to give Donald Trump credit, he was able to bring a rhetoric and a style that he had perfected over his career to the political sphere and connect with people and become the nominee,” Romney said. “Despite the fact that I and a lot of other people thought...

Via Red State, Romney already said he’d take a look at Johnson in an interview with CNN last month (excerpted in the clip below) but that was hypothetical and qualified by concerns over libertarian support for legal weed. Johnson and Weld are telling you now that things are in motion. Does Romney have anything to lose at this point by going the whole nine yards and endorsing a third-party candidate? He’s already gone eight yards in refusing to back Trump, and he saw what sort of reception Ted Cruz got for the lesser offense of politely avoiding an endorsement. Any...

With just a few weeks to go until the GOP convention, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says he’s still getting some encouragement from his family to jump into the 2016 race for the White House. “My wife and kids wanted me to run again this time,” Mr. Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said this week at the “Aspen Ideas Festival.” “I’ve got some kids — I got an email from one of my sons yesterday saying ‘you gotta get in, Dad — you gotta get in,’ ” he said....

Mitt Romney still can’t see himself voting for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. However, he can’t bring himself to vote for the Democratic counterpart, Hillary Clinton, either. But the 2012 GOP nominee has a solution: putting his own wife’s name on the ballot. “It’s a matter of personal conscience,” Romney told CBS News’ John Dickerson Wednesday at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “I can’t vote for either of those two people.” Romney explained that he simply cannot get behind Trump’s divisive character. “Our nominee is saying, ‘Hey look it’s these people here. It’s these Mexicans coming across the border... it’s...

Donald Trump can be an effective president, and he's going to win with you or without you, Republican Chairman Reince Priebus told several hundred of the party's top donors and strategists Saturday. Trump is setting a dangerous example for Americans by promoting "trickle-down racism," and the party must look beyond this presidential election to find its future, the 2012 nominee Mitt Romney told the same group later that morning. Delivered within moments of each other at Romney's annual business and politics summit at a five-star ski resort, those opposite messages were enough to cause whiplash. That's a hazard of being...

Mitt Romney blasted the Republican Party on Saturday for not doing more to stop presumptive nominee Donald Trump, saying that the prospects for the party are bleak. During a discussion in Park City, Utah, where Romney is hosting his annual conservative summit, the 2012 presidential nominee singled out Trump’s former rivals Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), the last two candidates to drop out of the race against Trump. "Ted Cruz was basically praising Donald Trump through the whole process," Romney told discussion host and CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer. And Kasich “was in well after the time...

Mitt Romney laid into the large and rambunctious group of 2016 Republican candidates here on Saturday, arguing that they deserved a share of blame for the rise of Donald Trump. During a question-and-answer session with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer before around 250 Republican donors gathered here for the Romney-hosted Experts and Enthusiasts summit, the former Massachusetts governor said this year’s group of primary candidates misplayed their hand. By spending months attacking each other and ignoring Trump, he argued, they made a severe tactical error that allowed Trump — who Romney has criticized as a "con man" and a "fraud" —...

Mitt Romney, the twice-failed Republican candidate for president, has kicked off a weekend convention of fellow-minded “NeverTrump-ers,” hosting a retreat at a secluded Utah spot so they can gather and talk without worry of media coverage and condemnation about how they should proceed politically, if the billionaire businessman wins the White House. It’s called the “Experts and Enthusiasts Summit,” or “E2” summit, and it’s set at the Stein Eriksen Lodge Deer Valley in Park City, the Washington Post reported. Reportedly, those in attendance will talk about their plans to take down Trump with a third-party candidate. Such talk was going...

(CNN)One year ago the question hovering over Park City, Utah, was which presidential candidate could capture the hearts of Mitt Romney's friends. Less than a week later, Donald Trump said he was running for president and made them his enemy. And he beat them. Now, with Trump as the GOP nominee, those same Republican fundraisers, business titans and longtime friends of Romney are back to huddle far from Trump Tower. Attendees caution that Romney's annual summit -- The Experts and Enthusiasts, or E2, retreat -- is not an exclusive conclave for the #NeverTrump movement. Yet it is the closest thing...

The Weekly Standard published “An Open Letter to Mitt Romney” on Tuesday night, begging the former Republican presidential nominee to launch a third-party bid. “[T]hese are extraordinary times, and your nation still has need of your service. I respectfully implore you to run for president as an independent candidate in 2016,” Jay Cost wrote. Cost slams presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s “Nixonian paranoia” of “enemies” and calls her Republican counterpart, Donald Trump, “a sympathizer with the nativist ‘alt-right.’ ” “They do not see Americans as Americans,” the letter continues. “They see each of us as potential allies or foes,...

Romneycare in Mass was the model for Obamacare This weekend there are rumors that Hillary Kristol has recruited Romney to run as a Third Party spoiler, perhaps ubsuring a Clinton victory in Nov If that happens, Romney-Obamacre doesn't get repealed; its killer premiums will be with us forever.

Mitt Romney’s advisers begged him not to go to war with...Trump. After he decided to go ahead, Mr. Trump dismissed him as “lightweight” and “failed candidate.” This week, Newt Gingrich called him “pathetic.” Mr. Romney, sticking to his guns, has become a rare figure in American history—a former presidential nominee openly defying the man succeeding him as his party’s standard-bearer. Sitting at his home on the Pacific Ocean last week, Mr. Romney reflected on the waves he created by attacking Mr. Trump, how his family helped persuade him it was the right thing to do, and how he increasingly finds...

Newt Gingrich on Monday panned Mitt Romney’s campaign against Donald Trump as a weak effort that had not hurt the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. “It’s pathetic,” he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "I don’t know what happened to Mitt, but it is weird; it is bizarre. Having a guy like that go berserk in public makes you wonder what his problems are." Romney has emerged as one of the biggest critics of Trump, and earier this year gave a speech that excorciated him. “Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud,” he said on March 3 at...

It was two weeks before Election Day when Mitt Romney's political director signed a memo that all but ridiculed the notion that the Republican presidential nominee, with his better ground game could lose the key state of Ohio or the election. The race is “unmistakably moving in Mitt Romney's direction, the memo said. But the claims proved wildly off the mark, a fact embarrassingly underscored when the high-tech voter turnout system that Romney himself called “state of the art” crashed at the worst moment, on Election Day. To this day, Romney’s aides wonder how it all went so wrong...

BLACKWOOD, N.J. (AP) — Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton took aim at Donald Trump on taxes Wednesday and quickly found an unlikely ally: 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Clinton noted at a New Jersey campaign rally that Trump had yet to release his tax returns and said he would slash taxes for the nation's wealthiest people if elected president. Hours later, Romney issued a withering post on Facebook, accusing Trump of hiding a damaging revelation in his tax returns. "There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump's refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them," Romney...